2. You can have a tour of a Goat farm during your next Zoom meeting

A Californian goat sanctuary has come up with a unique way of raising funds during the COVID-19 lockdown. In return for a donation, they’ll join your Zoom meeting and give you a tour of the farm. To be fair, at this point you could replace me with a goat and our company Zoom meetings would probably make more sense.

One of the benefits of being at home, for me, is that I’ve become more aware of the visitors to my garden. I’ve been trying to identify the different bird calls. It’s harder than you would think. Steve gives a helpful guide to three common ones.

7. Bring back blogs

Wired Magazine has an excellent article on the inadequacies of social media, with an emphasis on Twitter, as a platform for disseminating complex information during global emergencies. Instead, they say, institutions should provide experts with the tools to publish long-form content on their own sites, and then use Twitter as a way to discuss and collaborate.

When confined to Twitter, pandemic experts mainly express themselves through 15- or 20-tweet long threads. Not only is this format cumbersome to consume, it also can’t easily be updated. To make matters worse, these threads are quickly pushed out of view by the downward pressure of the growing user timeline. A page or post on a blog, on the other hand, allows the expert to more easily write long-form content, including links to their articles and rich graphics, they can easily update as new information arises.

@Luke@jamie a classic.Reminded me of something someone said to me last year that certainly was very true for me.”Decades ago I used to pay money for after market ringtones. Now if my phone makes a sound of any kind I’m appalled”.